Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830

Chapter 4: The Exclusion of Africa and Asia from the History of Philosophy: The Formation of the Kantian Position

69 4 The Exclusion of Africa and Asia from the History of Philosophy The Formation of the Kantian Position The valorization of difference may operate in two ways: either by self-racialization, the affirmation of proper racial identity and (secondarily) of one’s own superiority, or by other-racialization, the affirmation of racial difference centered on the inferiority or malfeasance of the Other. Whereas other-racialization is finalized by the relation of domination, itself reinforced by those of oppression and exploitation—a logic of interest and profit—self-racialization is finalized by the relation of exclusion that, by a paradoxical logical procedure, ends in the extermination of the “other” agency, that is, by the destruction of the differential relation as such. —Pierre-André Taguieff1 At the end of the eighteenth century, the question of whether philosophy has Greek or Oriental origins became a matter of renewed debate. The last time the question was so earnestly debated may have been in ancient times. Alluding to an existing debate over the origins of philosophy, Diogenes Laertius states his position in the opening lines of Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers: Philosophy could not have arisen among the barbarians because they had no word or concept of it. Philosophy was an invention of the Greeks.2 In recounting philosophy’s origins, early modern historians of philosophy remained within the frame of Biblical history. In the many works of history of philosophy from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and 70 Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy eighteenth centuries, Adam, Moses, the Jews, or the Egyptians figure as the first philosophers. Besides Diogenes’s text, which was available in several Latin and vernacular editions, extremely few early modern historians of philosophy regarded the Greeks as the first philosophers . If they did so, they were invariably following Diogenes, who recounted a twofold Greek origin of philosophy: [Philosophy] started with Anaximander on the one hand, with Pythagoras on the other. The former was a pupil of Thales, Pythagoras was taught by Pherecydes. The one school was called Ionian, because Thales, a Milesian and therefore an Ionian, instructed Anaximander; the other school was called Italian from Pythagoras, who worked for the most part in Italy.3 This passage occurs in Diogenes’s prologue, which is followed by the first chapter: on the life and opinions of Thales. Diogenes’s claim, however, is much grander: “These authors [of contrary views] forget that the achievements which they attribute to the barbarians belong to the Greeks, with whom not merely philosophy but the human race itself began.”4 Whether Diogenes means here that the barbarians are un-Greek or that they are not human is not clear from the passage. None of Diogenes’s early modern imitators who adopted his position claimed that the Greeks were the first humans. Furthermore, none of them were troubled by the stories of various Greek philosophers traveling to and studying in Egypt as they simply repeated them.5 The opinion of most early modern historians of philosophy (including the ones who imitated Diogenes) was that philosophy emerged first in the Orient. Giovanni Tortelli’s De orthographia, which was published and republished at least seven times during the second half of the fifteenth century and possibly the first post-medieval work of history of philosophy modeled on Lives and Opinions, begins with Zoroaster.6 Johann Jacob Fries’s Bibliotheca philosophorum classicorum authorum chronologica (Zurich, 1592) begins with the confusion of languages after the destruction of Babel.7 In the Historiae philosophicae libri VII (1655) by Georg Horn, not Thales but Adam is designated the first philosopher.8 The first chapter of The history of philosophy: containing the lives, opinions, actions and discourses of the philosophers of every sect (1655–62), which draws much of its material from Isaac Casaubon ’s Latin edition of Lives and Opinions, is devoted to Thales, “who first introduced Natural and Mathematical Learning into Greece.”9 71 The Exclusion of Africa and Asia Its author, Thomas Stanley, noted that some ancients were confused about Thales, who they believed was born in Phoenicia. He was born, rather, in the city of Miletus in southern Ionia and was of Phoenician descent.10 Stanley recounted further that Thales traveled to Crete, Asia (Phoenicia), and Egypt, where he conferred with the priests and astronomers of Memphis. “Thus having studied Philosophy in Egypt, he returned to Miletus, and transported that vast Stock of Learning which he...